Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @02:36AM
from the more-reasons-to-privatize dept.

Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science."

But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

What do you expect from the network that brought us: "OK. I admit it was forged, but it's still true." and is courting that nasty little hatemonger Katie Couric to be an anchor.

Most mainstream journalists have stopped even pretending they care. It's all about smearing your enemies and promoting your agenda. The simple ability to communicate in English is far less important than pledging allegiance to political agenda of the editors-in-chief or network news vice-presidents.

Yes. I too hate those godless liberal terrorist lovers who undermine our way of life with their politically correct poor spelling! Obviously they are trying to avoid hurting the feelings of immigrants who refuse to learn English when they come to this country. They think there's no "right" way of spelling, its all just relative. And relativism, as we all know, is really a kind of terrorism.

This points out the mistake to the reader while indicating that the poster recognized it.

I think it's clear that neither the submitter or editor recognized it. Also, as the summary text, though verbatim from CBS, wasn't an explicit quote, "sic" would be needlessly pedantic; they should just have silently fixed it.

Instead of just complaining about the bad spelling and grammar around here, I thought I would take a moment to show how it should have been done. There are a great many SD readers whose native language is not English. (Unfortunately they are learning the language from SD posts.) Not all of them, at least, would know about "sic".

As to your point, it doesn't matter where the submitter's italicized text came from; the relevant point is that it is verbatim and not the su

When the Polynesians found Easter Island, they found a paradise. Seas teeming with porpoises, huge edible palm trees, bountiful flightless birds and tillable soil from coast to coast.

Unfortunately, they also brought rats with them on their canoes.

The rats ate the birds and bird eggs. The trees were cut down for timber and kindling. The land was farmed to exhaustion. And the entire civilization that arose there quickly collapsed under its own weight.

The whole time, people thought things would last forever, but they couldn't see the end coming.

ExxonMobile and its supporters in Washington state, "The earth belongs to man; he can wreck the earth in any way that he sees fit".

Before 2050, we will know which bit of wisdom is the right wisdom. By 2030, we will have burned up all easily retrieved oil. Significant portions of Artic and Antartic ice shelves will have melted away.

Why would we need to limit population growth, and how would you ever propose we do this?

Environmentalists say that the best thing you can do for the earth, the best way to conserve resources, is to not have more than two children. In retrospect, this is obvious... the earth can barely handle the 6 or so billion people here now; try 60 billion on for size. As for the how... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen one way or another.

As for the how... well people aren't gonna like it, but its gonna have to happen

Actually, if not for immigration, most of the first world would already be in population decline. When people get reasonably comfortable, and childhood mortality is negligible, children are deferred and one or two are sufficent for most to satisfy their need for procreation. We've got one and that was enough for us.

The deferal of procreation is doing more to limit population, than the number of children is. When a couple has 2 kids by 20, then 4 grand kids by 40, then 8 great-grand kids by 80; then the population has increased by 14 people in the span of one generation, waiting till 35 increases the population by 6 people.

Not necessarily; Developed countries undergo population implosions.Schools in Japan are shutting down in a wave, starting with the first grades, and then pushing onward through the school. Sometimes, they just shut down entire floors in their schools.

There are more then 10 million people in tokyo alone. You really think Japan can support the population it has now? Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.Unfortunately they have painted themselves into a corner. The future of mankind is exactly like japan today. This pyramid scheme where the young work to finance the old is going to collapse sooner or later. We can hold if off for a while by opening up the floddgates and letting the

Of course not. Japan has eaten through it's tree population and is not having to import every square inch of wood.

Actually, Japan has the highest percentage of forestation of any first world country (almost 70%) [worldinfozone.com].

As for other imports of Japan, you are more correct: they import much of their food, including staples like rice and seafood. This puts the population of the island at risk in the event of instability of their trading network. The modern economic environment, however, means that the population of

Why would environmentalism be against technology and developing? Progression is not one-dimensional, you see. Almost all environmentalists i know, are really into technology and innovation. They like high-tech renewable energy-systems. Some develop lightweigt vehicles. You know what's the main reason for farmers to switch to organic farming? Theye're curious, they want to try something new. It's the conservative farmers and technicians that stick to unsustainable methods.

Go visit your local eco village. Start talking about technology, start talking about genetic manipulation, start talking about virtual reality, start talking about pervasive computing, and start talking about the technological singularity. See how far you can get, before people start getting worried or strained looks on their faces. Report back on your experiment here.

I don't know what kind of environmentalists you hang out with, but as a born and bred son of Oregon hippies, I think you are full of shit.

I wrote about five paragraphs after this sentance and deleted it all. I'll just throw out some names of some of the biggest supporters of population control:

Stalin, Hitler, Sanger, Blavatsky..

The same four people also supported the thesis that the earth is round. This does not mean that the earth is flat. Just because evil people can see the obvious does not mean that the obvious isn't obvious. The earth has only so much stored energy; it receives only so much energy from the sun. The more people the energy has to be shared with, the less there is for each. The faster we use up the stored energy, the sooner we're forced back onto just the energy we get from the sun. That's just straightforward.

We cannot sustain our present rate of population increase; we probably cannot even sustain our present population indefinitly, once cheap energy runs out. This is obvious; so obvious that you don't need to be an evil genius to understand it.

What you may need to be an evil genius to do is to come up with a good solution, because this problem looks intractable in a free society.

In zoology, there is ample evidence to show that population growth is self-restraining. That there are several factors...

There are indeed. Their names are Famine, Pestilence, Predation and Death. If we don't come up with a better solution, the Four Horsemen will be along shortly with one of their own.

Thank you, I was going to point out that according to Thomas Malthus' explanation of carrying capacity, a species does not ease up comfortably to the carrying capacity as a limit graph would show; the species will grossly overshoot the carying capacity of the environment it lives in, and will die off rapidly, dip under the carying capacity, flourish, and overshoot it again. The real graph depiction is something approaching an oscilating sine wave, where as time increases, the modulation decreases, but is e

Okay, but isn't "natural" population control usually achieved through massive infant mortality rates? I wouldn't think animals would see a lack of resources and just stop having kids; humans sure as hell don't, anyway.

As for the how, there's a number of innocuous steps you could take right now. Education is an obvious first step. Then there's monetary incentives; perhaps we could remove the dependent tax credit after the second child, or at least decrease it. If it gets really bad, forced sterilization mi

At first thought it might seem like the only way to limit the birthrate would be draconian or orwellian methods - nothing palatable to be sure. However, the truth is much simpler than that.

There is a long-observed direct corrolation between poverty and birth rate. Societies with greater poverty have higher birthrate. Even in China it's commom for city-dwellers to observe the 1-child rule, but poor farmers still have families of 6 or 7 simply because they need all the labor to help create an income. The same is true in the slums of Calcutta where children are needed to rifle through trash piles looking for recyclable goods. This happens across all the great poverty centers: Manilla, Bangkok, Mumbai, Calcutta, Nairobi, Cairo, etc.

Japan is a perfect example of the opposite. They have a NEGATIVE birthrate because the affluence of their society has led many to chose not to have children.

The solution to overpopulation will come hand-in-hand with our solution to many other injustices: great a fair distribution of resources and we'll be able to live sustainable on our planet.

Japan is a perfect example of the opposite. They have a NEGATIVE birthrate because the affluence of their society has led many to chose not to have children.

I'm busy trying to work out how it is possible to have a negative birthrate. The best I can do is imagine some kind of reverse aging field affecting parts of Japan, where adults become children, children become babies, and babies crawl back into... No, better stop right there.

I think you're leaving out a few factors, though... tradition and religion, for example.If a society traditionally has large families, then it doesn't matter whether they live in poverty or health - they're likely keep that tradition.

As for religion - there's highly catholic families here who have 7-9 children. Not because they're poor - in fact, most of them lived in wealth/until/ they had the 5th or 6th child and had to pay for their education, etc.

great a fair distribution of resources and we'll be able to live sustainable on our planet.

Oh, you came so close. "Fairness" has nothing to do with it. The key to reducing population growth, is, as you deduced, more wealth. Redistributing resources contrary to the efficient allocations determined by free markets, however, consumes wealth. To counter population growth, you need economic growth, and the absolute best grower of economic wealth is free markets.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone try to write off a geoshities site as a credible source of information (or as any source of information, for that matter).I'm a hair over 20 years old and I've heard people bitch and moan about the end of the world, global warming, WW3, etc, since I was born. And frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of WW3 than global warming. While I'm all for alternative energy, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, and what not, all the bullshit from BOTH SIDES of the global warmi

...And frankly, I'm a lot more afraid of WW3 than global warming. While I'm all for alternative energy, recycling, minimizing fossil fuel consumption, and what not, all the bullshit from BOTH SIDES of the global warming argument have made me extremely cynical of wether or not it should be taken seriously.

Frankly (and I have absolutely no credentials to back up my opinion) I think the sea levels rising several meters of more in the next 20-30 years has about as much chance of occuring...

I fully agree that Washington politics on the environment sucks. But why bring Native Americans into this? Like pretty much all other societies, they caused extinctions, destroyed the environment, and didn't keep their population in check (at least not by choice).

Native American sayings are not a good guideline for modern policies. Tackling issues of sustainability will require science and technology.

Editing Environmental Science
Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday March 21, @02:36AM
from the nothing-to-worry-about dept.
Aqua OS X writes to tell us CBS News is reporting that government scientist James Hansen recently spoke out against the White House in an appearance on 60 Minutes. From the article: "Hansen is a disgraced researcher on global warming. He was the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate before resigning under controvercial circumstances. But this scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration may have been restricting who he may talk to and editing what he might have wanted to say. Politicians, he says, could be editing minor insignificant sections of science."

Comrade Lysenko believes in Michurianism, and Michurin believes in Lamarckism! So don't try to fool us with Darwin, the People's Science teaches that acquired traits can be inherited. It is by this inheritance of acquired traits that the Proletariat will triumph over the Bourgeois Revanchist "science"!

From the first link: Lysenko called Mendelian genetics "reactionary and decadent" and Mendelians or Darwinists "enemies of the Soviet people". It wasn't until 1965 that soviets were allowed to even begin to catch up in biology.

And when the Jewish scientists fled Nazi Germany, many came to America to work on the atomic bomb -- a bomb originally intended for use against Germany.

So as the Bush Administration and the Kansas school board repress honest science in America in favor of ideology and religion, ask yourself where we'll be in five or ten or fifty years.

Will any great biologists come out of Kansas if they need, at best, several semesters of remedial training to disabuse them of the lies of "Intelligent Design"? Will the breakthroughs in stem-cell research -- breakthroughs that could cure numerous diseases and extend human life for decades -- happen here, under the Christian eyes of Dr. Frist, or in freer and more open lands like India and Korea?

Or will that not matter at all, as global warming and environmental collapse literally drown America for the profit of the oil companies?

For a hundred years or more, America has been at the forefront of scientific research and development. Scientific leadership has been a pillar supporting our country's wealth and power. Will you let that pillar be chopped down so a few plutocrats can profit while science-hating fundamentalists cheer?

In the next several elections, you'll be voting not just for Representatives or a President -- you'll be voting on the future, or the future decline, of your country. Will you emulate the courage of Dr. Hansen, or will you surrender to an American Lysenkoism of ignorance, ideologically-fettered science, and superstition?

Why is this under a "more-reasons-to-privitize" department? I'm all for private ventures going into space, but you're quite delusional if you expect there to be any large scale investment in global warming research by the private sector. Yes, I know there might be some exceptions, but privitization is not going to give us better research.

Better rockets, cheaper missions, maybe... but, in general, this sort of basic scientific research is *exactly* the sort of thing the government should be doing. Of course, in a perfect world, the government wouldn't be trying to stifle the scientists either...

The inherent nature of the State is that it screws up what it does. State run enterprise is bloated, inefficient, expensive and a political football.

The inherent nature of the state is that, whatever it does, there is always some smartass who thinks it is bloated, inefficient, expensive, and a politial football. Let me break it to you: the government does a lot of valuable things nobody else would do. That they always could be done better is trivially true, as pretty much everything anyone ever does could b

The private sector in the UK has proved far more effective at screwing up former government-run organisations than the inefficient state sector ever could.The shockingly poor public transport system, British Telecom actively working to slow ADSL adoption and competition to protect its ISDN investment, the 25% hikes in natural gas prices this year, the predicted water shortages in the south-east due in part to not enough investment in infrastructure improvements, ad nauseum. You could argue that they are all

I'm all for private ventures going into space, but you're quite delusional if you expect there to be any large scale investment in global warming research by the private sector.

That's because if you invent a new spaceship you can make lots of money, but if you invent a new device to clean the air you can't make a dime, even though there is clear value in it. All you have to do is change this problem with the economy and suddenly the air will start getting a whole lot cleaner. That was the point of the Kyoto

This is part of a more general turning away from science in society. In the past Universities and government departments have been safe havens for scientists - willing to fund long term research with the only downside being the paperwork needed.

However we now live in an age when even this is being eroded and where the forces of politics, never the most rational of disciplines, feel safe in attempting to pervert its path. Will anyone really care? Will anyone notice? Scientific learning is looked down on. You are more likely to be admired in society for your knowledge of baseball scores than buckyballs.

I would suggest to our american colleagues that they look elsewhere for those that will value their work. The US isn't going to get better any time soon, whatever the shade of the next party in power. It's either that or organise your own political party and take control...

I would suggest to our american colleagues that they look elsewhere for those that will value their work.

That is already happening. Just last week, University of Colorado (CU) lost a nobel laureate physics prof(Carl Wieman) who loves science. He went to Canada. Why? Funding and the hassles of fighting the state. But mostly funding.

In Colorado, our gov. (owens) cut back state support of state schools, while at the same time allowing the christian colleges to be able to get funding from the state.

I did not say that scientists are migrating out of america en masse. Nor did I say that we are having our ass kicked. What I did say is that scientists are STARTING to move away. That will have a long term impact. It takes years to build up programs and universites.

As to sources, well google them. There have been plenty of sources that speak of USA losing its edge. Personally, I do not think that we are losing it yet. But I do see that we are erroding the base that is needed for it.

Why would you call that a counterpoint? It is no counterpoint, it supports his case. It tells us that the disease is not limited to the Bush administration and some fundamental changes will have to be made to root it out.

You can't spin this as a liberal versus conservative thing, this is science versus politics:

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he's had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

The Clinton administration, however, didn't go so far as to muzzle the scientist:

"In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public."

One of the worst ways to interfere with communications is to put words in someone's mouth. The article says that before Hansen's reports were published the Council on Environmental Quality's chief of staff would rewrite them. What credentials did the chief of staff have for changing the work of a climatologist? He used to be a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. He's at Exxon Mobil now.

The other important, if not newsworthy, quote was

"Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting," says Piltz. "That's why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they're retired or unless they're ready to resign."

An organization with a culture like that might be right about something someday, but only by coincidence.

So because the purveyors of lies and the purveyors of truth both are flawed humans, you're not going to listen to either of them even though you can tell which is which? Lunacy.Who is trying to gain more power -- the politician or the scientist? Surely the fact that being a politician is the business of wielding power implies the former? Who has the greater vested interest -- a scientist working for the government whose coming to the press could at best get him a book deal, or the politician representing

Killer logic there. I suppose you'd consider it a stretch to say religious leaders are rewriting the politics?That was actually my point (sort of. It's hard to make a subtle point in one line). The present Powers-That-Be find it easy to run down science because science is at odds with religion. And that dismissal of evolutionary science on dogmatic grounds makes it easy to dismiss other science, without any consideration for facts or evidence.

That's a very good point. I am encouraged becasue there is some recent movement in Evangelical circles to challenge this kind of policy on the climate. Driven by literal interpretation of Genesis, consumption of natural resources was once seen within conservative Chrstian theology as the birthright of humanity. That theology of dominion is starting to give way, now, to a theology of stewardship - still working from the idea that God has given the natural world to humanity, but changing the spin from domi

In Siberia, there is a forestry where the tress grows in pairs right next to each other.

While the common wisdom is that each individual trees need space around it to grow, the theory was that this was only true for capitalist trees. Rather than compete with each other for resources, socialist trees would cooperate for the common good.

Every official report from the forestry shows that the experiment was a great success.

Just one problem. We're not trees. Socialism/communism fail goes against human nature on the whole. As such, end results are corruption and tyranny due to the vacuum of power these two systems provide in a political environment.

Capitalism, while not perfect, does harness human nature (greed, power...etc) for the benefit of all society. It's proven to work and continues to this day.

With all due respect to James Hansen, the problem here is simple: just how many microseconds after scientists attempted to influence politics did you think it would take before politicians attempted to influence science?

We've seen it everywhere from the debate on Global Warming (where scientists have joined forces with ecologists to engage in massive social engineering in the form of the Kyoto accord) to the debate on evolutionary science (where fundamentalists attempted to redefine science with Intelligent Design) to the debate on gun control (where researchers have attempted to show a direct causal link between guns and crime) and pesticides (Alar, anyone?)

Now, whenever I see a news report on a political topic start quoting "scientists" or "researchers", I generally don't think "oh, good; a concerned scientist trying to weigh in on an important topic", but "whose special interest money is paying for this guy?"

Science where relevant should influence politics. Science in essence is an attempt to study reality and of naturally politics should be based on reality. And this is especially true in sciences which have been found to be reliable such as physics and chemistry.

Your argument appears to be that scientists should not publish information that could effect public policy. This would mean that they should not talk about vaccination programmes being able to save millions of lives, of smoking causing cancer, of smog causing breathing problems, of the reduction of salt-marshes increasing the risks of flooding nor the other million or so things that have changed public policy based on science.Out of interest, what should be used as a basis for public policy if not science?

Here in Holland, many times i see the same problem. Close to where i live, the government wants to build a highway to relieve congestion on a parallel highway. So they hired scientists to study the effects of the new road. It turned out the road would make things worse: instead of relieving the congestion on the other road, it would increase congestion on every other main road in the surroundings.The scientists, knowing what would happen, leaked this result immediately to the press, but the final report got stowed away in a very deep drawer. Parliamant had a tough job to get the report out of this drawer again.

But. Then came the obligatory environmental impact study. In this study, the former report is completely ignored. The vast increase of congestion is not taken into account in an evironmental impact assessment!

If the politicians have it their way (and they must be quick, everyone knows they will get their asses kicked next elections) we'll have a road that increases the congestion, costs about a billion euro's of tax money and will terribly damage the environment and landscape. But the construction firms will be very happy.

Surely, the U.S. has laws against this sort of thing, does it not? If the administration is doing the sort of thing that Hansen is alleging, it would be grounds for criminal indictment, wouldn't it? (Sorry, this is coming from a non-US citizen here.)

I saw a tongue-in-cheek poster at the Society for Neuroscience a few years ago, in which the authors compared portrayals of different professions in a large number of movies. Overall, the most negatively portrayed profession was murderer, and scientists were right in there at #2. The methods employed for this survey involved beer and pizza.

The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what science is, what it's useful for, or what scientists do. To be fair, it's not a question with a simple answer like 42. But it's not surprising that people who make policy decisions at all levels of government know nothing whatsoever about science. It's mis-portrayed almost completely in the media, and probably mis-taught at all levels of education. Scientists are not valued by society in any meaningful way.

Any scientist whose work is in the popular press probably has a story about how their work was portrayed in a way to mislead, not inform people. Perhaps someone will repost the link to that recent insightful article about how few science reporters have any science background.

The government has been rewriting science more blatantly in environmental sciences than in other areas. But it's the other kind of rewriting that's more insidious and harmful. Necessarily, most science funding comes from the government. They decide what to fund and what not to fund. Serious scientists get input into this decision, but not the last word. What's insidious about it is that no individual scientist is doing what they do because the government told them. But since there's such an oversupply of scientists, including a healthy supply interested for their own reasons in doing the specific things the government would like, the government can shape science to whatever extent they want without there ever being a single scientist who was specifically influenced.

Son, we live in a world that has myths, and those myths have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, PrinceAshitaka? The President has a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for the Big Bang Theory, and you curse the Baptists. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the Theory's subversion, while tragic, probably saved souls. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves souls. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want us on that wall, you need us on that wall. We use words like God, Intelligent, Design. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent defending something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very mythology that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a Bible, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.

How can you not blame the bush administration when they are deliberately lying about science?! How can you blame scientists for not explaining science properly to politicians that are deliberately lying and misrepresenting scientific knowledge? How are scientist to blame for politicians spreading misinformation and FUD in the so-called free press while at the same time trying to limit scientists ability to explain the current scientific theories to the public?

I am all for listening to both sides of a story, but where did scientists worried about the future of the planet exactly do wrong? If someone except the politicians are to blame here, it is the sheep public who lets this happen. Or write posts like yours.

but where did scientists worried about the future of the planet exactly do wrong?

Does poor science qualify? How about Michael Mann's Hockey Stick work? From this week's New Scientist (subscription only article)

There is one sense in which Mann accepts as inarguably true. The point of his original work was to compare past and present temperatures, so he analyzed temperatures in terms of their divergence from the 20th century mean. This approach highlights differences from that period and will thus accentuate any hockey stick shape if - but only if, he insists - it is present in the data.

The charge from McIntyre and McKitrick however, is that Mann's computer program does not merely accentuate this shape, but crates it. To make the point, they did their own analysis based on looking over the past 100 years instead of from the 20th-century mean. This produced a graph showing an apparent rise in tempeartures in the 15th century as as great as the warming occurring now. The shaft of the hockey stick had a big kink in it.

The New Scientist article goes on to cite poor data sources such as tree rings with known variability issues and inherent bias in data selection. When Mann was asked to divulge his source code so it could be inspected for methodology errors, he declined saying it was proprietary code. Revealing methodology is inherent in good science and Mann violated that key precept.

You should be skeptical of climatology in general given that it's even more removed from model failure than meteorolgy. Meteorologists are well acquainted with their models failing because they get feedback on a daily basis. Climatologist don't get that feedback because there's only one climate so they retrofit their models to fit past performance of the climate - a methodology that meteorologists have demonstrated doesn't work very well.

Even worse, they can't even agree on what's going to happen. One model has Europe roasting, another freezing. It can't be both but regardless of which outcome we eventually encounter, climatologists will claim they predicted it.

At it's core, the anthropogenic climate change hypothesis has relied on CO2 emissions as being causative. You have to be skeptical of a claim that an incredibly complex atmosephere which we can't fully model is being driven by variations of a single gas. A gas whose concentration is less than a tenth of one percent.

Science isn't about consensus or about getting one definite answer. Science is about honest debate where competing theories are developed based on what is known (hopefully facts) and to expand what we know by doing measurements/experiments (i.e., testing these theories).

Science is of course very respected in our societey, and therefore dangerous for certain politicians and other with a rigid, fundamentalistic world-view were facts is not of importance. The reason science is so respected is because the sci

Okay, okay, okay -- this sounds like McKitrick's bluster. I actually READ his book, I read his criticism of Mann's methodology, and I read a few rounds of responses. This doesn't make me educated on the subject, but it makes me more than educated enough to talk about McKitrick. His credentials on the subject are poor, his charges against Mann's work do not invalidate it, and having read his book, I cannot seriously believe that he is working in good faith.

There are valid criticisms of current climate science, and they are coming from within the scientific community, including the IPCC. The field of research is moving fast and the near-consensus from the people who know the most is that we're in trouble.

Did you read McKitrick's recommendations for climate science? Basically this: "Boy, math sure is hard, so let's all give it up and go home and have drinks with our friends." I really wish I was joking.

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled "not sufficiently reliable." It's a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

I suppose the fundamental uncertainty of scientific results is just not as marketable as religious Truths.

"...the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

I agree with him in one aspect of this, in that we'd be stupid to sign Kyoto and become involved in making transfer payments to other nations because we polute more than they do. Better to simply vow to reduce our own CO2 emissions, and spend the dollars here doing so.

While dire, the time frame isn't quite as bad as you imply. He is suggesting that if we continue as we are we run a high chance of crossing a tipping point in a decade. Slowing emissions will lengthen the time to the tipping point which will give us hopefully enough time to not just slow the rate of emissions but being to reverse the damage that has already been done up to that point.So basically the worst thing we can do right now is nothing (as you point out 10 years isn't long at all).

Emissions are never going down. By products of human activity is proportional to a modern quality of life that all human around the world strive for. America and the rest of Europe have achieved this. China, India, and Africa want this too. They are next in line, and will reap the fruits of their labor to the modern age of energy consumption.

Don't fight global warming, it's a losing battle. However, human can and will do what we do best...and that's adapt.

Unfortunately, contrary to popular belief, planting trees is not a solution per se. The carbon cycle may slow down a little, but eventually, all the carbon in leafs and trunks will end up as CO2 in atmosphere again.Dynamically, some of it is retained (new trees hopefuly grow, as old die and rot) in forests, but forest fires can dramatically change that.

Besides, some experimental research had shown that plants have upper limit on CO2 atmospheric concentration they can handle. After that limit is breached, ph

Here's the thing, what you are describing not only isn't censorship, it is called having a job. I know plenty of engineers, researchers, artists and yes, even scientists who have to put their personal opinions about what the work means up on a shelf, because that opinion doesn't agree with the official line of the company/university/agency funding the work. That is why they give you a paycheck and pay your budget, so that they can use your research in whatever way they choose.Now most of these people just h